Jamaican British

Some people would deny that I'm Jamaican British.
Anglo nose. Hair straight. No way I can be Jamaican British. ← others judge his appearance to define his identity

​They think I say I'm black when I say Jamaican British 
but the English boys at school made me choose Jamaican, British? ← others make him question his own identity as they won’t accept him as both

 Half-caste, half mule, house slave - Jamaican British.
Light skin, straight male, privileged - Jamaican British. ← intersectionality of knowing he has some privileges for being half white

 Eat callaloo, plantain, jerk chicken - I'm Jamaican
British don't know how to serve our dishes, they enslaved us.←worried that his jamaican side will be overpowered by his white side

 In school I fought a boy in the lunch hall - Jamaican. 
At home, told Dad I hate dem, all dem Jamaicans - I'm British. ← others label him as jamaican, making him hate that side of himself, reflects the views around him

 he knows where this “hate” is coming from→He laughed, said you cannot love sugar and hate your sweetness,← it is more about the way you view yourself than how others view him, being jamaican will always be a part of him regardless of how much he may not want to
took me straight to Jamaica - passport, British.

 Cousins in Kingston called me Jah-English,
proud to have someone in their family - British. ← being british makes him more important, he gets put down for his jamaican side but even his jamaican cousins view being english as a good thing, a privilege

 Plantation lineage, World War service, how do I serve Jamaican British?
When knowing how to war is Jamaican
British.← still feels conflict between the 2 sides of his identity, paradox

contrast of words used to describe mixed race people before and in modern times

Context – AO3

Raymond Antrobus was born in 1986 Hackney, London to an English mother and Jamaican father, who had come to the UK in the 1960s as part of the Windrush generation.

Until the age of 6, when he was diagnosed as deaf, he was thought to have learning difficulties.

His love of poetry began as a child, when his father (whose deep voice he could hear) read poetry aloud to him.

He has won numerous awards for his poetry, which deals with aspects of his identity such as being deaf and his dual heritage.

Form

The poem is a ghazal (pronounced ‘guzzle’), originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love.

The form has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet).